Yale University has acknowledged that its law school responded to a wave of student requests for their application evaluations by discarding all such records — an action that has prompted an advocacy group to warn colleges not to destroy potential evidence in admissions lawsuits.

Yale Law School’s destruction of the records, first publicized by one of its own students on Sunday in a column for The New Republic, occurred after several students submitted requests for copies of their application evaluations under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or Ferpa.